10-Minute Watercolor Painting of a Crow

[Music] hello everyone welcome to my channel I hope you're having a great day I do have a 10-minute painting for you but before I get into it I wanted to quickly mention my website Cory frankc creates. comom it is the best place to get to know a little more about me to get in touch with me you can sign up for my weekly email newsletter there check out uh my online Art Shop and my uh gallery or sort of portfolio of work that I've done um so I'd love for you to go check it out and get to know me a little bit uh that is Cory print crates.com so this painting that I have in front of me is part of my 10minute watercolor Series where it's all about getting uh fairly simple quick painting done in a short amount of time and just uh continuing to build those skills and practice because the more you paint the more you practice the more you'll get the hang of how watercolors work um and you can also feel that sense of accomplishment from finishing a piece in a short amount of time so I love birds so I tend to do a lot of Bird Paintings today we have a I believe it's a crow although it might be a raven but um the reference image is linked in the description so if you want to follow along you're welcome to do that and find that image uh without any further Ado I'm going to go ahead and jump right into it so I'm starting right in here I dipped my brush in the water this is a size 12 round brush pretty good multi-purpose brush cuz it's fairly large but still comes to a fine point and if you haven't seen any of the other 10-minute waterolor paintings um that I've done uh just letting you know that I don't do a pencil sketch for these really quick pieces of course for a larger piece I mean for pieces that will take longer where I want them to be really accurate I'd lay down um a light pencil sketch before I even begin painting but in these cases with the 10minute paintings I just get straight to the painting it's all about laying paint down quickly being very loose and free with it and really training your eye to observe what you're looking at which in this case was the reference image that again is linked in the description so I'm starting out typically with these 10-minute paintings especially when it's an animal I start with kind of a focal point or something that I'm going to base the rest of my painting around so in this case it is the Crow's eye so I am using black and that is Ivory black in my palette and I'm staying right on the tip now the paint that I first picked up cuz I added water to my palette was a little watery so I'm laying in those kind of watered down little washes making sure that I paint around the spot in the eye that is the Highlight that um is kind of that white highlight spot reflected in the eye and then slowly working on building up the areas where where it's really really dark because the eye kind of has that really light bright spot um of the reflected light and the rest of it is fairly dark and then there's a light ring around the eye as well so that is what I'm working on here so I started out with the wet on dry technique where I'm laying wet paint on a dry surface and then as I started to add more of those dark tones there's a little more of that wet into wet technique where I'm putting wet paint on an already wet surface or there's already wet paint laid down I added a little bit of Manganese blue to kind of the edge of that highlight because when the Highlight transitions into the darker part of the eye it's not um a 100% hard line between the black and the white there was a little bit of transition there and it had a little bit of a blue cast to it so that's why I used the manganese blue and now I'm moving on uh so I spent quite a bit of time getting that eye kind of fairly accurate the shape the shading and now I'm moving on to really th thick black paint still working with the black here uh to start getting the feathers and the shading around the eye and you can see I left that light ring around there and when I filled in that really dark paint uh using that wet on dry technique around the eye I realized the eye itself was not quite dark enough so that can often happen where as you start working on other areas of your painting you realize maybe what you initially laid down didn't get quite dark enough so you can always just add more more paint to it especially after the those first layers dry just to build up the proper uh value and now working fairly Loosely I'm blocking in so there's some feathers that go away from the eye towards the beak and I'm now starting on the beak which has a lot of kind of highlights on it so I'm not doing just a pure black I have a watered down black to create that gray I'm blocking in sort of the top edge of the beak and then the bottom edge of the beak and from there I go in to build up some of the areas that have the darker shading uh and then I have that lighter tone already laid in for the lighter portions of the beak and it's in those areas where I turn my brush a little more on the side to fill in a sort of larger uh portions at a time and then when I need to get more of a feathery texture or have thinner STP that's where I go to the tip of the brush and something that's important to remember with these 10-minute paintings is that you're really not going for Perfection and 100% Super Hyper realistic paintings it's really about creating something that's recognizable really trying to observe where things are located relative to other uh things within your image so for instance I said my sort of of anchor or key focal point was the eye and then I'm trying to look at my image and realize okay so the edge of the beak goes about that far away from the eye and that part of the beak below it um the bottom portion of the beak and the chin is about this far away from the eye in this diagonal Direction you're just getting a sense of trying to um have relative positions of the elements of your image related to each other so that is something that comes with practice uh and it's also why I uh for pieces where I want to be really really accurate I of course create a pencil sketch first so I can make sure everything is blocked in and drawn in with correct proportions correct spacing before I actually move on to painting but again for these quick pieces it's a really great way to train yourself to observe exactly what you're seeing and um kind of relate each portion of the piece to either your focal point or to multiple key points like okay here's the end of the beak and here's the back of the head and they're about this far apart from each other and all and all of that kind of stuff so um you can train your eye to do that and and the more you do it the um more it will come naturally uh so kind of going back to uh what I was doing U before I got into that spiel about related Parts is I have still fairly watered down washes of black and when I say washes I typically mean fairly loose somewhat watered down uh paint that you're just really stroking in very quickly blocking in the shape and again not worrying about perfection here what I'm trying to do is get a sense of texture so having some of those brush Strokes show through to get that uh suggest that idea of feathers and a feathery texture and then also in the areas where there are where it's really really dark because it's not just going to be 100% pure black over the whole bird there's going to be some portions that have sort of a Sheen to them from the light shining on the feathers there's going to be some areas that include a little bit of color just like this and I pushed it a little further but I love especially Crow feathers and even on the sort of lighting on the beak and again I just really push this pretty far I used the vidiian green which is a really lovely kind of teal World green uh but I really pushed it further than you typically see in reality but in reality when you see uh Crow or a blackbird or Raven feathers and you turn them a specific way in the light they almost remind me of an oil slick when it's wet and shines in the light you get that kind of muted rainbow of color so that's what I did there adding some of that vidiian green and now I'm going back now that those washes that I laid in for the beak have mostly dried I'm going back in to Define that line between the upper beak and the bottom beak um and here we go again with just laying in some of those kind of rainbowy tones and they're much more subtle in the image but I have the creative license as the artist we have the creative license to really kind of push color um maybe in a certain direction that's a little more Fantastical so that's exactly what I did I used the veran green that second tone was ultramarine blue and then that third one is dioxazine purple it's just really beautiful purple so I loved laying that in starting to use some Strokes really dark Strokes of paint on the tip of my brush for some of those feathers that are not laying exactly flat against his neck and using a really watered down uh black paint and I am using black throughout all of this a lot of the time I use pay's gray um in place of black or in combination with black and this time I just Ed the pure black along with those hints of color raw Sienna is a beautiful gold and I was detecting some hints of kind of a golden yellowy orangish tone in the feathers so again I just went in using that wet on wet technique just kind of stroking in that color letting it spread wherever there is wet paint already and just letting it go with that and being really happy uh with that sort of free uh loose style not painting every single detail and I knew I was getting close to the end of my painting so I just kind of quickly reinforced some some of the edges of that top of the head the feathers on the top of the beak started to add a few more Strokes down at the bottom here um of his sort of where his breast is or the top of his chest on this bird so just kind of stroking in some of that and letting it not painting the whole body I just wanted this to be more of like a bust up type of portrait so really got a nice dark loose tone in there uh for the kind of back side of the neck and then I love always adding just a little bit of Whimsy so I picked up quite a bit of black paint dipped it in my water and then just tapped the brush over the top of the paper to get a few splatters I could have gone further with it but I knew I was out of time and I think it was right around here where technically my 10 minutes ran out but I went ahead finished the signature really quick so I could say I had finished the piece and that's all there is to it that was the end of that and I was um had just a lot of fun with this and if you decide to paint it too I hope you did as well thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed that if you did please give this video a thumbs up go ahead and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already I'd really appreciate it until my next video be kind to yourself be kind to others God bless and I will see you [Music] soon

Channel: Corrie Frank Creates

Views: 8,950

Keywords: watercolor, watercolor painting, quick painting, quick watercolor, quick watercolors, watercolor bird, watercolor crow, watercolor raven, simple painting, simple watercolors, watercolor tutorial, how to paint, how to watercolor, watercolor how-to

Id: yO8HVZEYFXU

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 27 2024